Filter

More than four years ago, Steve Jobs declared war on Flash and heralded HTML5 as the way to go. You could be forgiven if you thought the HTML5 standard — the follow-up to 1997’s HTML 4 — has long been set in stone, given that developers, browser vendors and the press have been talking about it for years now. In reality, however, HTML5 was still in flux — until today. The W3C today published its Recommendation of HTML5 — the final version of the standard after years of adding features and making changes to it.

After a headline lull, LibreOffice on Wednesday renewed its drive to replace Microsoft Office with the newest version of its open source suite of applications. The latest update comes as the organization behind LibreOffice says that its products are now being used by some 80 million users around the world. In contrast, only 10 million users had downloaded the software by Sept. 2011.

Mozilla is updating a plan to put ads on the windows that show when Firefox users launch a new browser tab, reassuring users that they won't lose control or be overwhelmed with ads. Mozilla announced the Firefox new-tab page advertisements idea in February, saying it wanted to feature "directory tiles" that would be useful to users. The plan has caused some worries, though.

Microsoft has yet to patch its latest critical Internet Explorer zero-day security flaw, but an advisory about the bug now offers two temporary solutions. Updated on Monday, Microsoft Security Advisory 2963983 offers new information about the new zero-day vulnerability that affects all versions of Internet Explorer. The flaw could allow remote code execution and has already been used in "limited, targeted attacks," Microsoft revealed, though those attacks have so far affected only IE versions 9, 10, and 11.

The first thing you’ll notice in Firefox is the beautiful new design that makes it easy to focus on your Web content. The tabs are sleek and smooth to help you navigate the Web faster. It’s easy to see what tab you’re currently visiting and the other tabs fade into the background to be less of a distraction when you’re not using them.

Google has built a new version of its WebP software into Chrome to let browsers display its image format 25 percent faster, the company said Friday. The better-performance, new libwebp 0.4.0 is part of Google's general effort to speed up the Web, and the new software also uses less memory and fixes an issue that had blocked Google from supporting animated WebP images. The updated WebP support is built into the version of Chrome that's currently in beta.

PayPal, the eBay-owned online payments platform that made up some 40% of its $16 billion in revenues in 2013, has turned on a redesigned website — it’s biggest attempt yet at putting a contemporary, simplified face on one of the older services on the web (founded: 1998); and to introduce users to some of the newer features it’s hoping will take off, such as mobile and physical store payments.

If you don’t know about Mozilla’s Persona sign-in and identity, you’re apparently not the only one. Citing low adoption rates, Mozilla has decided to give up on this project and is allocating its developer resources to different projects. Mozilla will continue to host the service and patch security issues as needed, however. The organization hopes the community will continue to develop the product, but given that there had been very little interest in supporting it in the first place, it seems doubtful that many developers will volunteer to pick up the slack.

Google today released the latest stable version of its Chrome browser. Version 32 includes many of the features that recently arrived in the beta channel, including improved malware blocking and tab indicators for when a site is playing sound, accessing the webcam and sending video to your Chromecast. Google uses a speaker icon, blue rectangle and red dot to indicate these different functions.

Paying for stuff with PayPal can sometimes be a pain. When users click to buy an item on third-party Web sites, they are usually redirected to PayPal's site, have to sign in there and then carry out the process. This is something the online payments company is now changing. Paypal announced on Monday that it is redesigning its online checkout system so that those annoying redirects are no longer part of the payment process. Now, customers should be able to do the whole checkout within a merchant's Web site and in fewer steps.